DDO wiki talk:Naming policy/Archive02

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Request for review of policy

I think that a 14-day opportunity to review and consider alternative options to any policy, without offering a grace period is exceptionally short.. There are administrators and senior-editors that may be away on vacation or simply in the process of two-weeks worth of finals at school. I believe that a 30-day opportunity should be the ABSOLUTE minimum and in all fairness to some of those people who's opinions are just as valuable as everyone else's, I believe that the optimum time period to review the policy should be 90-days. I also believe that once the policy is actually agreed upon, that there needs to be a six-month grace period to adapt and make an effort to correct any content that is now in violation of the policy. I'm not saying I am opposed to any policy, quite the contrary; however, it needs to be done correctly and in all fairness to all that may wish to provide their insight, opinions, suggestions, and/or objections. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:40, April 25, 2012 (EDT)

Section Headings

LrdSlvrhnd (Contribs • Message • Email) made a change to a section title on DDO_wiki:Administrators?? ("This Group" is not a proper name and shouldn't be capitalized). Point of fact, "This Group" is part of the proper name of the section. Section headings are not part of the normal pagename policy as of yet. They are rarely used in links to pages and in the few instances I know of that they are used in links, they are most always a piped link anyways. In order to use a section heading in a link, you are required to follow a Pagename#Section_Heading format. The reason that these are linked is because the pound sign looks absolutely atrocious and breaks any formatting of the sentence anyways. I feel that these section headings (also known as section titles) should use title case because it does not break any sentence structure if used as a link in the middle of a sentence due to the fact that they are piped to remove the page name and pound sign. I would like to fully expand and discuss this before doing a back and forth drama thing about it.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:44, April 27, 2012 (EDT)

It had nothing to do with wiki pagename policy, and everything to do with English. But honestly, I don't really give a crap, if you feel that strongly about it go ahead and capitalize.

Just beware driving more users away with your autocracy, Tech.

LrdSlvrhnd (Contributions • Message) 18:35, April 27, 2012 (EDT)

How do you figure? I don't feel autocratic what-so-ever, if I did, I would have simply put it back and said "don't do that again." Instead, I posted my viewpoint here and am asking for input from everyone. As far has having to do with English, please see this page and this page or simply Google it yourself. Edit: I just re-read my initial post, and can see that you may have thought I was being accusative or offensive, I apologize if you thought this was my intention. I was simply trying to bring to light a possible area of disagreement about the policy and the section heading on a page.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:47, April 27, 2012 (EDT)

Maybe not on this, but you're coming across more and more as autocratic lately with all of these policies and policy changes and policy edits and whatnot, at least to me.

As for your links, there's a big difference between titles and section headings. See Rogers Hornsby, Richard Hakluyt, Harry Chauvel, and Iguanodon, the last four featured articles on Wikipedia itself. Every single one of those, the sections are in sentence case. From the Featured Articles page: "Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. They are used by editors as examples for other articles. Before being listed here, articles are reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to our featured article criteria." From the Manual of Style: "Use sentence-style capitalization, not title-style capitalization, in headings. Capitalize the first letter of the first word, but leave the rest lower case (except for proper nouns and other items that would ordinarily be capitalized in running text). Thus Rules and regulations, not Rules and Regulations. Linking is easier if titles are in sentence case; it is easier for articles to be merged or split if headers resemble titles." Granted, Wiki isn't DDO wiki; however, I believe that their established precedents are an excellent starting point for us.

LrdSlvrhnd (Contributions • Message) 20:22, April 27, 2012 (EDT)

That is not, and has not been, my intention what-so-ever.

I've re-opened all of the policies for full review and modification by any administrator after they were previously closed after a 14 day window to look at and make any revisions that was previously set...
If you believe that Wikipedia (MediaWiki common sites in general) is a fair example of how new policies should be made, have a look at the amount of time the they collaborated on their latest revision that is set to go into effect on May 25, 2012. The process took them 140 days to consider, revise, re-revise, consider, etc..., and accept. This is 1,000% of what our administrators were offered.
Now that I have made my intent to revise and personally invest some time into the project and have declared that is re-opened and no longer a locked box of what Shade set is law and will be followed instantaneously with an extremely poor process for revising and making it satisfactory to everyone... Well, I truly hope that ALL of the administrators take some time to review and and expand upon what is there.
If there is any uncertainty, I would hope that they would ask, "What did you mean by __fill in the blank__?" If that uncertainty exists for them, other administrators, I can only imagine what kinds of confusion the rest of our viewers are having.
I am also truly sad if Shade decides not to come back and make further edits, I feel, as I have always felt that he was a very strong and positive asset to this wiki. Until this conflict between him and I, and honestly, as Yoko5000 will tell you, I was pushing to have him have more advancement as a moderator on the DDO forums.
With all of that being said, I wish to re-focus on my original purpose for editing and developing the wiki, to make the DDO experience all that it can be for ALL users that visit us for assistance from the newbie that has never played pen & paper or DDO before and has decided to click on and check out the link they see hounding them on FaceBook or whatever to the power user that wants to know exactly how this that or the other might effect their gameplay. I've probably said too much on this, but I want everyone to know that I really want to make this wiki an enjoyable place for everyone to come to and learn or offer some information that was previously not mentioned.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:50, April 27, 2012 (EDT)

I don't know about this one. I think this should be a situational thing, which can be fixed with minor edits as we go along. Even on this page "Request for review of policy" is sentence case, which seems fine, IMO. Whereas "Section Headings" is fine in title case. This being a talk page, it's probably a bad example overall, but you see where I'm going - I'm not sure if we need something 'set in stone.' Taurolyon (Contributions • Message) 17:46, April 28, 2012 (EDT)

A fair compromise might be to title case everything that is the larger than === ... === and everything smaller (==== ... ==== and beyond) would be sentence case? Just throwing out ideas..

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:51, April 28, 2012 (EDT)

I just fear that we may be getting overzealous with the policies. If we start correcting them quoting and linking policy pages everywhere, we're going to have more policies than editors, as we've intimidated them all off.
I understand their purpose and why their there, but there must be a point where we need to ask, is this really necessary?

Taurolyon (Contributions • Message) 18:24, April 28, 2012 (EDT)

What's wrong with using sentence case for sections/headers? It doesn't make sense to choose sentence case for titles, emphasizing only proper nouns and then choose title case for sections, the title's 'subordinates', emphasizing all words but articles, conjunctions etc. The two case styles don't mix well, if they were we wouldn't be discussing this.

Here's a quote I used before, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles:

The convention followed by many British publishers (including scientific publishers, like Nature, magazines, like The Economist and New Scientist, and newspapers, like The Guardian and The Times) is to use sentence-style capitalization in titles and headlines, where capitalization follows the same rules that apply for sentences. This convention is sometimes called sentence case. It is also widely used in the United States, especially in newspaper publishing, bibliographic references and library catalogues. Examples of global publishers whose English-language house styles prescribe sentence-case titles and headings include the International Organization for Standardization.

by Mjoll (Contributions • Message) 03:23, April 29, 2012 (EDT)

Two paragraphs up from Mjoll's quote from from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles:

Among U.S. book publishers (but not newspaper publishers), it is a common typographic practice to capitalize "important" words in titles and headings. This is an old form of emphasis, similar to the more modern practice of using a larger or boldface font for titles. Most capitalize all words except for closed-class words, or articles, prepositions and conjunctions. Some capitalize longer prepositions such as "between", but not shorter ones. Some capitalize only nouns, others capitalize all words. This family of typographic conventions is usually called title case. Of these various styles, only the practice of capitalizing nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives but not articles, conjunctions or prepositions (though some styles except long prepositions) is considered correct in formal American English writing, according to most style guides, though others are found in less formal settings.

I've done a lot of "What do all of the major papers and magazines do?" kind of research looking through both US & UK publishers, and have found that they can not agree which is proper or better either. There is actually an almost perfect 50/50 split with "The New Yorker" undecided even amongst itself using "ALL CAPS", "Title Case", and "Sentence case" all in the same issue depending upon where you are looking at the title. With all of that being said, I think the most correct thing to do is restate the "headings and titles" section of this policy to state something of the nature that it is up to the individual editor, and possibly and addendum to the wikiquette saying that an edit solely to change the case of the headings is inappropriate.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 12:51, April 29, 2012 (EDT)

That quote indicates that - while there is only one sentence case style - the media can't agree on a unique title case style and uses several different ones. I like the compromise you suggest better, you should add it to the policy and be done with this, these rules are starting to become annoying.

by Mjoll (Contributions • Message) 14:32, April 29, 2012 (EDT)

Agreed, besides, I've stated before that we have the power to patrol and move pages, so it shouldn't matter how bad anonymous / new editors FUBAR the pages. We can always fix them to our standards.

Yawgmoth (Contributions • Message) 16:14, April 29, 2012 (EDT)

The current "solely up to the individual editor" is not a policy in the first place.

Wikipedia uses policy like this and is followed by this. Yes, this is not wikiepdia BUT the same principal criteria apply that "a title be recognizable (as a name or description of the topic), natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with the titles of related articles". Also "Headings should not refer redundantly to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.". Headings that stammer over and over the articles name and/or its superior heading or looks more like a sentence than a heading, simply does not serve the cause. Also the roller coaster HeaDinG WriTing Makes TeH wiKi look Like WriTTEn by kids if NoT bY Monkeys plus hyperlinking to any of those is a pain.

BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 16:47, March 18, 2013 (EDT)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Okay, so since BlackSmith took it out of context, it is safe to assume others may as well... The section he refers to is:

Most simply, this wiki uses "sentence case" rules for naming pages and files; that is, only the first word is capitalized, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalized by a more specific rule.

For section headings (the stuffs in between ==... ...==) it is solely up to the individual editor. Per wikiquette, it is also inappropriate to make changes to a page solely to change the case of the section headings.

Which says the wiki prefers sentence case, but it is up to the editor which casing option they pick. Maybe it needs to be reworded as:

For section headings (the stuffs in between ==... ...==), this wiki requires use of "sentence case" rules for naming pages and files; that is, only the first word is capitalized, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalized by a more specific rule.

I'm wondering if we should use css in common to apply { text-transform: capitalize; font-variant: small-caps; } to all section headings? Or at least a certain range of headings like h1 - h3 and the rest could be { text-transform: lowercase; } and :first-letter { text-transform: uppercase; }
What do you guys think of that? Then it wouldn't matter what people type, it will render the way it should look and could never look like "HeaDinG WriTing Makes TeH wiKi look Like WriTTEn by kids if NoT bY Monkeys"

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:12, March 18, 2013 (EDT)

You are wrong in both cases. I did not take it out of context and You are assuming wrong.

The sections I am referring are the ones that I have either linked or mentioned. We don't have any policy about headings, but the naming guide lines in Wikipedia specially points out that while headers should follow the sentence case, the header naming follows same rules as article naming. Reasons for such policy are quite simple as headers create the internal structure of the article.

For the cosmetic solution, it does not address the both main problems. Too complex and sentence like headers are intact and hyperlinking becomes even harder as the editor needs to manually check the topic as hyperlinsk are case sensitive. e.g. Home#Welcome to the DDO Wiki!.

BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 17:24, March 20, 2013 (EDT)

Are you saying that your quote:

solely up to the individual editor

doesn't come from:

Most simply, this wiki uses "sentence case" rules for naming pages and files; that is, only the first word is capitalized, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalized by a more specific rule.

For section headings (the stuffs in between ==... ...==) it is solely up to the individual editor. Per wikiquette, it is also inappropriate to make changes to a page solely to change the case of the section headings.

Yeah, you are right about the css not fixing the root of the problem, but javascript could be used to force it to be changed in the editbox upon creation or php could be written to force the casing to conform... Even a simple bot would work if we have anyone versed in writing python scripts (common for wiki-bots).

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:48, March 20, 2013 (EDT)

Eh, I was trying to say that having a no rule is not a rule in first place. "Do what ever you like" is not a rule or a policy as it does not guide the behavior in any way.

Then i tried to point out that in other wikis they use the article naming as a conjuction for the header naming.

The sentence case rules are seldom followed but because of the addition to wikiquette (which discussion/groundings cant be found) of "it is also inappropriate to make changes to a page solely to change the case of the section headings." it can't either be fixed without making edits to the context itself or violating the wikiquette.

I see coder point of view approach here :-D Go ahead and code it, but it would be more efficient to state a policy to keep the headers short, on topic and succinct(?). Then running that bot would also be grounded with "because the header was breaking the policy". BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 11:51, March 22, 2013 (EDT)